When we set down the Book of Genesis last Sunday, we might've broken a sweat, because we tackled one of the most infamously controversial and debated pieces in the entire Bible: the story of the sons of God, daughters of humanity, and the Nephilim (Genesis 6:1-4). I know last week's message might have been a bit complex and hard to understand, but if our brains didn't melt out our ears, well, we made it through better than some have! In that passage, we suggested Genesis is responding to all the pagan stories of a lost heroic age full of demigods and heroes, from whom the pagan elites traced their family trees; Genesis picks that proud boast apart, adding that such a time would've been a dark age that made clear the grievousness and bitterness of human sin.
This Sunday, we have to go back to the dark ages. Because while that time illustrates a general truth about the sin that eats away at the human heart, it also provides a portrait of a society gone insane, a world gone dark, that we need to hear about today. God assesses it as a time when human wickedness multiplied and metastasized on earth, when society had perverted human potential to be a factory of evils and so stained creation to its core.
Ancient readers looked at this as the story of a world where people “no longer rendered to God his due honors, nor took account of justice towards men, but displayed by their actions a zeal for vice.”1 “Everyone walked in the stubbornness of his evil heart” (Jeremiah 11:8), and “fell into profane and harmful deeds.”2 “Great iniquity was then spread over all the earth,”3 so “there were many wicked ones, and they committed adultery and erred, and all their conduct became corrupt.”4 They were “overbearing and disdainful of every virtue..., completely enslaved to the pleasure of sin.”5 They became “violent men who devise evil things in their heart and stir up wars every day” (Psalm 140:1-2), so that “the world was full with wickedness and crime.”6 They were read as “wretched, evil-hearted, fickle men, abandoning modesty, desiring shamelessness, tyrants in fickleness and violent sinners, liars, sated with faithlessness, evildoers, truthful in nothing, adulterers, ingenious at pouring out slander, not fearing the anger of the Most High God.”7 “They sinned against beasts and birds and everything which moves or walks upon the earth, and they poured out much blood upon the earth,”8 so “the whole earth was filled with blood and oppression”9 as “everyone became murderers, parricides, infanticides, fratricides.”10
One modern scholar invites us here to “imagine living in an oppressive, abusive culture where there is no social order, no laws, and no regard for justice or mercy.”11 This is a world of lawlessness, a world of social disregard and strife, a world of sexual confusion, a world of pollution, a world of hunger and violence, a godless world. It isn't a pleasant picture at all. But it's a fruitful mirror we can hold up to any society, like ours today. I know we look around at the world we see and hear mediated through the news, and things don't look great. In many ways our society and culture would horrify many of those who came before us. Genesis 6 asks us, how much further would things need to slip in order to extinguish what good is left? What things still intact separate us from the world that so broke God's heart (Genesis 6:6), the world that needed to be blotted and rebooted (Genesis 6:7)?
But after painting this grotesque portrait, the story of the Generations of Adam doesn't end on a note of doom and gloom, as much as it has every right to. Instead, it ends with an odd note of hope, a note that's going to then be picked up in the next section. The Generations of Adam assure us that, despite the world's deep darkness and the threat that all will drown in the tears of their Maker, the light of God's face fell on one man (Genesis 6:8).
We already met this man in the genealogy, which introduced him as Lamech's son Noah, invested with a father's hopes and prayers to get relief from the pain and toil and misery of a cursed world (Genesis 5:28-29). We found that Noah's name comes from the Hebrew word for 'rest,' and it also sounds a lot like the word for 'relief' or 'comfort.' But there's another secret to Noah's name. It's an anadrome, meaning it's another word spelled backwards, like how in English 'stressed' spelled backwards is 'desserts,' or 'star' spelled backwards is 'rats.' In Hebrew, Noah's name is like that. Spelled backwards, it gives us 'favor' – 'grace.'12 So we shouldn't be shocked to find that “Noah finds favor in the eyes of the LORD” (Genesis 6:8) – it was there in Noah's name all along.
In the Bible, to 'find favor' in somebody's eyes is to have their positive esteem, their good will, their affectionate regard.13 Being helped or blessed could be evidence that you've found favor, like when Lot tells the angels that, since they'd saved his life, he must have “found favor in your eyes” (Genesis 19:19). People prefaced requests by asking them “if I have found favor in your eyes” (Esther 7:3) – the implication being, if I've found favor in your eyes, then you might favor me with a favorable response now as I come to you for a favor! When Israel has favor in the eyes of the Egyptians, the Egyptians “let them have what they asked” (Exodus 12:36). Gideon asks God, “if now I have found favor in your eyes, then show me a sign” (Judges 6:17). Moses asks that, if he's found favor in God's eyes, God would therefore forgive Israel's sins and dwell in their midst (Exodus 34:9).
Sometimes in the Bible, there can be a reason, a sort of deservingness that makes the difference. The Bible says “good sense wins favor” (Proverbs 13:15) and if you follow wisdom, “you'll find favor and good sense in the eyes of God and man” (Proverbs 3:4). God is habitually favorable toward those who love his name (Psalm 119:132). On the other hand, sometimes one person finds favor in the eyes of another for no obvious reason or even in spite of their lack of merit. Ruth asks Boaz, “Why have I found favor in your eyes... since I am a foreigner?” (Ruth 2:10). The psalmists ask God for favorable treatment on the basis of their desperation (Psalms 25:16; 31:9), or even because they're a sinner (Psalm 41:4). This Hebrew word for 'favor,' in another form, can also mean 'generous': somebody who gives freely to the poor favors them (Psalm 37:21; Proverbs 14:21). What merit do the needy bring to win favor? Just their humble state, just their empty-handed need!
And that shows us why 'favor' leads us to the concept of 'grace' as we know and love it. The Christian life is built 100% on God's amazing grace. In believing “the gospel of the grace of God” (Acts 20:24), “we have obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand” (Romans 5:2), so that we may be “saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus” (Acts 15:11). God aims to “show us the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:7), and even now we can by day be “strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 2:1). Well, Noah beat us to the punch. He was already favored with amazing grace. When all around gave God a frown, Noah “stands... as one who brings a smile to God's face.”14
The Generations of Adam doesn't explain if there's a reason why Noah got amazing grace, if there's a reason he found favor in God's eyes. But it tells us one more weird thing about Noah. All his ancestors got married and had children – ancestors tend to do that, you know – but though the numbers in the genealogy are probably more symbol than literal, four of the patriarchs are under a hundred years old when they have children, and the other five are still under two hundred. The latest bloomer among them, Noah's dad, is still less than 24% of the way through his total life span; Adam is 14% through, and everyone from Enosh to Mahalalel is less than a tenth of the way. By our standards, those percentages make for very early-in-life marriages and parenthoods.
Noah, though, breaks the pattern. He's got five centuries under his belt, over half his life, before he becomes a husband and father (Genesis 5:32). Up until then, while everybody around him was “eating and drinking, marrying and being given in marriage” (Luke 17:27), Noah wasn't. He didn't condemn them as evil, like the liars Paul knew who “forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving” (1 Timothy 4:3). But just as Paul says that “he who refrains from marriage will do even better” (1 Corinthians 7:38), so Noah refrains for most of his life, seeing celibacy as the better path in his situation (1 Corinthians 7:26). That can't have been easy. His life of self-denial stuck out like a sore thumb. He was under an “extensive moral apprenticeship... in ascetic preparation for his mission,” whether he knew it or not.15 Even Martin Luther was impressed by Noah's “extreme chastity,”16 celebrating Noah as “a virgin above all virgins.”17 But then, more than halfway through Noah's life, Noah suddenly gets married and has children; maybe God told him to. God abruptly changed Noah's perception of his vocation, for reasons that make sense to us in hindsight.
And that prepares us to leave the Generations of Adam and go to the Generations of Noah, the next chapter or tablet in the story Genesis is telling. But unlike the Generations of Adam, the Generations of Noah is a flood story. And the Bible's not the only place you could go to find one of those. Actually, we've found bunches of flood stories from the Middle East, written long before Moses. Everyone believed in a flood; what differed was how they told the story and what they thought it meant.18 The Bible's flood story was handed down by people who knew there were other flood stories out there, with other main characters in place of Noah.
One such character was a Sumerian man named Ziusudra, whose name means something like “Life of Distant Days,”19 “Life of Prolonged Days.”20 In Sumerian tradition, Ziusudra was the son of Ubar-tutu, a king before the flood who reigned in a city called Shuruppak. That was a real place; there's little left, but I could show you on a map where it was. Some versions of the king list add Ziusudra as the last king before the flood.21 In their flood story, “Ziusudra was king and gudu-priest.”22 The Babylonians spoke of Uta-napishti the Distant, whose name means “He Found Life”23 and who lives in Shuruppak as the son of Ubar-tutu.24 He's got a royal palace and doesn't worry about what some other king thinks.25 But where the Sumerian story has Ziusudra worshipping and praying when he gets chosen, the Babylonian story gives no hint Uta-napishti is especially good or close to Ea, the god who saves him.26 He comes across as “a random recipient of Ea's benevolence.”27
The Babylonian story hints, though, that Uta-napishti is a name he earned after the flood, and that his earlier name was Atra-hasis, which means something like “Good Listener,” “Extremely Clever,” “Exceedingly Wise.”28 And most Middle Eastern flood stories, including the oldest, make Atra-hasis their star. These stories don't mention his throne or city, but they have him describe himself as “Atrahasis the priest: I live in the temple of Ea my lord.”29 Atra-hasis is close enough with the god he serves that he can recognize that god's footsteps.30 His god favors him because Atra-hasis grieves for his people and is especially reverent and respectful of his god.31
In these stories, the entire drama is based on the gods not seeing eye-to-eye: where one god leads the way in destroying, a different god takes initiative to save. These stories aren't about whether humans are good, but whether the gods are good!32 But in Genesis, the God who looks with favor on Noah is the same good God who will blot out human evil. Unlike Ziusudra or Uta-napishti or Atra-hasis, Noah's favor doesn't come through his position. Nowhere does the Bible make Noah out to be a king ruling others or a priest with office in a temple. It doesn't tell us whether Noah lived in a city. Unlike them, Noah just finds favor with the LORD (Genesis 6:8).
Now the Generations of Noah story picks up where the Generations of Adam left off. Each of these tablets starts by overlapping the one before it, revisiting some hint by exploring it from a different angle. So now the story starts over with Noah's “sterling character.”33 First, using a word we haven't seen yet in Genesis, it describes Noah as “a righteous man” (Genesis 6:9). Good is the opposite of evil; righteous is the opposite of wicked (Psalm 1:6). “Whoever practices righteousness is righteous” (1 John 3:7), and to do righteousness is to do the proper thing, the lawful thing, the thing that's legally and morally 'in the right.'34 Any fair-minded judge would confirm that by ruling in his favor: 'Innocent!'35 Once Israel gets the gift of the Law full of God's “righteous rules” (Psalm 119:7), Moses could say “it will be righteousness for us if we are careful to do all this commandment before the LORD our God as he has commanded us” (Deuteronomy 6:25). Noah lives before Moses, and “from sinful Adam up to Noah..., there was the natural law alone.”36 Noah is righteous by “living in conformity with the created order,”37 and is treated as morally innocent in the midst of a guilty world.38 He was “most upright and true, a most trustworthy man, concerned for noble deeds,” as one ancient writer put it.39
One old Jewish writing, imagining Noah's autobiography, has him say that “when I emerged from my mother's womb, I was planted for righteousness; all of my days I conducted myself uprightly, continually walking in the paths of everlasting truth. … Then I, Noah, became a grown man. I held fast to righteousness and strengthened myself in wisdom.”40 Therefore, “I, Noah, found grace, prominence, and justification in the eyes of the Lord.”41 Here, Noah's life of righteousness explains why he eventually finds favor in God's eyes. After all, wisdom said that although “he who pursues evil will die,” yet “whoever is steadfast in righteousness will live” (Proverbs 11:19). The prophet Ezekiel says Noah had “delivered his own life by his own righteousness” (Ezekiel 14:20).
So later Jews argued that “God loved Noah for his righteousness,”42 that God favored Noah “because his heart was righteous in all of his ways... and he did not transgress anything that was ordained for him.”43 Many early Christians agreed that “it was thus of his own doing that Noah found favor in the sight of the Lord God: he won grace for himself through acts of virtue, and for this he received grace from God.”44 But every now and then, an early Christian would argue that “Noah the patriarch did nothing to make himself righteous.”45 And just as there are scholars today who read Genesis saying that Noah found favor because he was righteous,46 others insist Noah's righteousness can't explain him finding favor.47
I think it's more complicated than either/or. There's a weird thing Moses says after God tells him that Moses has found favor in his sight (Exodus 33:12). Moses says: “If I have found favor in your sight, please show me your ways, that I may know you in order to find favor in your sight” (Exodus 33:13). Because Moses gets grace, he wants to know God better so that Moses can get grace! If Noah was righteous from his youth, it was only ever because of the grace God gave him. God creates in us by grace the righteousness that pleases him.48 “Whatever is pleasing to God in a man is caused by the divine love,” and Noah was no exception.49 But because Noah has that righteousness, because he cooperates, he becomes more appealing in God's sight, he finds further favor and grace on account of that righteousness. “What God will crown is not your merits but his own gifts.”50 Grace leads to righteousness which wins Noah favor and readies him for more grace.
Elaborating its description of Noah as a righteous man, the Generations of Noah story adds that he's “blameless in his generation” (Genesis 6:9). The word 'blameless' means 'unblemished,' 'intact,' 'complete.' Its usually the way you'd describe an animal that's fit for sacrifice. The Passover lamb had to be “unblemished,” healthy and physically intact and undamaged (Exodus 12:5). That's a refrain in all Israel's sacrifices: the offered creature must be “without blemish” to be worthy of giving to God (Leviticus 1:3; 3:6). When a person is 'unblemished,' it means they're morally healthy, spiritually intact; they've got integrity of life from the inside out. Moses urged Israel to “be unblemished before the LORD your God,” meaning not compromised by the pagan nations around them (Deuteronomy 18:13). Just so, Noah “was not implicated in the evil that was practiced all around him.”51
As for what it meant that Noah was blameless or unblemished “in his generation,” one famous rabbi thought that Noah stood out mainly because the bar was so low on account of how bad the world was.52 Some early Christians followed this line, thinking Noah was called righteous only “in comparison to others,”53 only “relative to... his own generation.”54 Another rabbi disagreed with the first, saying that if Noah managed to stay blameless even in a generation like his which gave him zero support and every opposition, then the darkest of societies only made Noah's virtue more obvious and impressive.55 And other early Christians followed that path, saying that as “the guilt of other people does not cast a shadow on the just man,”56 so Noah was “as perfect as [people] are able to be in this pilgrimage here on earth.”57
And that version makes a lot more sense. If you want a picture of Noah, you could do worse than Psalm 15: he “walks without blemish and does righteousness and speaks the truth in his heart” (Psalm 15:2), he doesn't hurt his neighbors or friends or use words to tear people down (Psalm 15:3), he's unimpressed with those who are far from God, he keeps his word even when it hurts, he isn't out to make a buck at anybody's expense (Psalm 15:4-5).58 Noah had “a habitual practice of integrity in all his dealings with others.”59 He “stood apart as an exemplar of morality” whose “conduct reflected an uncompromising concern for justice.”60
And Noah did so despite the torrential currents of global culture rushing the other way. He's already surviving a flood before a single raindrop falls. The world around him gave Noah every possible incentive to compromise a little here, a little there – to accept a small blemish, to overlook a light lie, to go along to get along just this once, to stoop even an inch in the direction of everybody else's level – and he wouldn't do it. He's swimming up the waterfall. He's looking the world dead in the eyes and saying he won't budge. Courageously he dares to “defy the entire world” by his refusal to be “conformed to this world” (Romans 12:2).61
All Genesis needs to add is that “Noah walked with God” (Genesis 6:9) – or, in the Hebrew order, “with God walked Noah.” Even during his ascetic adventures in celibacy, Noah surrendered any loneliness he felt into God's hands, and the two of them had a fellowship that made up for Noah's estrangement from his world. He lived a life of piety, rendering to God the honor and devotion due to him; Noah invested his time and energy into intimacy with God.62 Noah had the advantage of a good role model in Enoch, gone before Noah was born but who left a legacy that Noah could look to (Genesis 5:22-24). And even after he married like Enoch had, Noah continued to be – in the words of one old bishop – a “good man with wife and family, achieving great satisfaction in God's eyes and opting for the way of virtue in sight of everyone, hindered in no way either by marriage or by family responsibilities.”63 Celibate or married, Noah's relationship with God was strong.
Later, in the fullness of time, God saw a chaste virgin named Mary, whom he had prepared from her very start to walk with him in holy blessedness; more than Noah, she was God's highly favored one, and more than Noah, when God redirected what she'd thought was her vocation, she accepted humbly the will of God (Luke 1:28-38).64 It was through her that God then sent his Son, “full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). The Son of God revealed himself in human flesh as “Jesus Christ the Righteous” (1 John 2:1), whose entire human life was a revelation of God's own righteousness to save (Romans 1:16-17). In following him as a disciple, anyone could walk with God as closely as Enoch or Noah did, “walking in the light of life” (John 8:12).
And when his fateful hour at last came, this Righteous One “offered himself without blemish to God... to purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God” (Hebrews 9:14). In dying and rising, he aimed “to present the Church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she may be holy and without blemish” just like he is (Ephesians 5:27). Through him and in her, we “receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness” (Romans 5:17). Because these gifts go together and must be used in practice, “we appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain” (2 Corinthians 6:1). For if we claim we still abide in Christ's grace, we “ought to walk in the same way in which he walked” (1 John 2:6).
Our world often doesn't make that easy, given “the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire” (2 Peter 1:4). “The whole world lies in the power of the Evil One” (1 John 5:19), and “whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God” (James 4:4). Being chosen “out of the world” like Noah was, “therefore the world hates you” (John 15:19). But “everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world” (1 John 5:4). Pure religion is “to keep oneself unstained from the world,” like Noah did (James 1:27). Our calling, says the Apostle, is to be “blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast to the word of life” (Philippians 2:15-16). If “the whole earth marvels as they follow the beast” (Revelation 13:3), if worldly people take “pleasure in unrighteousness” (2 Thessalonians 2:12), all the more reason that those “redeemed from the earth” should be “blameless” and “follow the Lamb wherever he goes” (Revelation 14:3-5).
So be like Noah. If the world chooses to be against the truth, against beauty, against goodness, then to that extent, be against the world – by their choice, not yours. If the world grows darker, shine brighter. If the world gets sadder, be more joyful. If the world gets madder, be more peaceful. If the world gets badder, be righteous beyond its understanding. If the world gets more crooked and twisted, show yourself ever more blameless in how you live. Hold fast to the word of life. Follow Jesus wherever he goes. Walk with your Lord. Understand that his grace is “better than silver or gold” (Proverbs 22:1), and that you dance for an Audience of One. The world may choose to be what it chooses to be; but you follow Jesus even if none go with you. For Jesus leads you to salvation. Jesus leads you to righteousness. Jesus leads you to the Father. Thanks be to God! Amen.
1 Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 1.73, in Loeb Classical Library 242:35.
2 John Cassian, Conferences 8.21.6, in Ancient Christian Writers 57:306.
3 Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures 2.8, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 61:100.
4 1 Enoch 8:2, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 1:16.
5 Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 1.72, in Loeb Classical Library 242:35.
6 Lactantius, Divine Institutes 2.13.1, in Translated Texts for Historians 40:158.
7 Sibylline Oracles 1.174-179, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 1:339.
8 Jubilees 7:24, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 2:70.
9 1 Enoch 9:9, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 1:17.
10 Melito of Sardis, On the Passover 51, in Popular Patristics Series 55:66.
11 Ingrid Faro, Evil in Genesis: A Contextual Analysis of Hebrew Lexemes for Evil in the Book of Genesis (Lexham Press, 2021), 162.
12 Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis (Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 47; Joseph E. Coleson, Genesis 1-11: A Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition (Beacon Hill Press, 2012), 200; Carol M. Kaminski, Was Noah Good? Finding Favour in the Flood Narrative (Bloomsbury, 2014), 130; Adam E. Miglio, The Gilgamesh Epic in Genesis 1-11: Peering into the Deep (Routledge, 2023), 112.
13 Robert D. Miller II, Covenant and Grace in the Old Testament: Assyrian Propaganda and Israelite Faith (Gorgias Press, 2012), 168.
14 Bill T. Arnold, Genesis, New Cambridge Bible Commentary (Cambridge University Press, 2008), 98.
15 Martin Sicker, Reading Genesis Politically: An Introduction to Mosaic Political Philosophy (Praeger, 2002), 75.
16 Martin Luther, Lectures on Genesis 5:32, in Luther's Works 1:355.
17 Martin Luther, Lectures on Genesis 6:1-2, in Luther's Works 2:7.
18 Tremper Longman III and John H. Walton, The Lost World of the Flood: Mythology, Theology, and the Deluge Debate (IVP Academic, 2018), 62.
19 Helge S. Kvanvig, Primeval History: Babylonian, Biblical, and Enochic: An Intertextual Reading (Brill, 2011), 66.
20 Yi Samuel Chen, The Primeval Flood Catastrophe: Origins and Early Development in Mesopotamian Traditions (Oxford University Press, 2014), 129.
21 Jöran Friberg, A Remarkable Collection of Babylonian Mathematical Texts (Springer, 2007), 240.
22 Eridu Genesis 86'-88', in The Context of Scripture 1:514. See Helge S. Kvanvig, Primeval History: Babylonian, Biblical, and Enochic: An Intertextual Reading (Brill, 2011), 66-68; Irving Finkel, The Ark Before Noah: Decoding the Story of the Flood (Hodder & Stoughton, 2014), 91; Martin Worthington, Ea's Duplicity in the Gilgamesh Flood Story (Routledge, 2019), 348.
23 Helge S. Kvanvig, Primeval History: Babylonian, Biblical, and Enochic: An Intertextual Reading (Brill, 2011), 66.
24 Gilgamesh XI.23, in Sophus Helle, Gilgamesh: A New Translation of the Ancient Epic (Yale University Press, 2021), 101.
25 Martin Worthington, Ea's Duplicity in the Gilgamesh Flood Story (Routledge, 2019), 350-351.
26 Martin Worthington, Ea's Duplicity in the Gilgamesh Flood Story (Routledge, 2019), 269.
27 Adam E. Miglio, The Gilgamesh Epic in Genesis 1-11: Peering into the Deep (Routledge, 2023), 106.
28 Irving Finkel, The Ark Before Noah: Decoding the Story of the Flood (Hodder & Stoughton, 2014), 94; Yi Samuel Chen, The Primeval Flood Catastrophe: Origins and Early Development in Mesopotamian Traditions (Oxford University Press, 2014), 129.
29 Atrahasis: I 6-7, in Nathan Wasserman, The Flood: The Akkadian Sources: A New Edition, Commentary, and a Literary Discussion (Peeters, 2020), 84.
30 Atrahasis: U 5-6, in Nathan Wasserman, The Flood: The Akkadian Sources: A New Edition, Commentary, and a Literary Discussion (Peeters, 2020), 96.
31 Atrahasis: C0 iv 13'-15', in Nathan Wasserman, The Flood: The Akkadian Sources: A New Edition, Commentary, and a Literary Discussion (Peeters, 2020), 18.
32 Martin Worthington, Ea's Duplicity in the Gilgamesh Flood Story (Routledge, 2019), 409.
33 Joseph E. Coleson, Genesis 1-11: A Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition (Beacon Hill Press, 2012), 206.
34 Benno Przybylski, Righteousness in Matthew and His World of Thought (Cambridge University Press, 1980), 10.
35 James McKeown, Genesis, Two Horizons Old Testament Commentary (Eerdmans, 2008), 52.
36 Robert Grosseteste, On the Cessation of the Laws 1.7.1, in Fathers of the Church: Medieval Continuation 13:61.
37 Carol M. Kaminski, Was Noah Good? Finding Favour in the Flood Narrative (Bloomsbury, 2014), 168.
38 Bill T. Arnold, Genesis, New Cambridge Bible Commentary (Cambridge University Press, 2008), 98.
39 Sibylline Oracles 1.125-126, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 1:338.
40 1QapGen 6.1-2, 6, in Daniel A. Machiela, The Dead Sea Genesis Apocryphon: A New Text and Translation (Brill, 2009), 43-44.
41 1QapGen 6.23, in Daniel A. Machiela, The Dead Sea Genesis Apocryphon: A New Text and Translation (Brill, 2009), 46.
42 Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 1.75, in Loeb Classical Library 242:35.
43 Jubilees 5:19, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 2:65.
44 Didymus the Blind, Commentary on Genesis 6:8, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 132:150-151.
45 Optatus of Milevis, Against the Donatists 7.1, in Translated Texts for Historians 27:134.
46 Bruce K. Waltke, Genesis: A Commentary (Zondervan Academic, 2001), 119; Scott W. Hahn, Kinship by Covenant: A Canonical Approach to the Fulfillment of God's Saving Promises (Yale University Press, 2009), 95.
47 Carol M. Kaminski, Was Noah Good? Finding Favour in the Flood Narrative (Bloomsbury, 2014), 137; Tremper Longman III, Genesis, Story of God Bible Commentary (Zondervan Academic, 2016), 116-117.
48 Augustine of Hippo, Expositions of the Psalms 98.8, in Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century III/18:474.
49 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I-II, q.110, a.1, ad 1, in Latin/English Edition of the Works of Saint Thomas Aquinas 16:456.
50 Augustine of Hippo, Expositions of the Psalms 70B.5, in Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century III/17:442.
51 James McKeown, Genesis, Two Horizons Old Testament Commentary (Eerdmans, 2008), 52.
52 Rabbi Yoḥanan, in b. Sanhedrin 108a, in Tzvi Hersh Weinred, ed., Koren Talmud Bavli (Koren Publishers, 2017), 30:380.
53 Origen of Alexandria, Homilies on Numbers 9.1.6, in Thomas P. Scheck, Origen: Homilies on Numbers (IVP Academic, 2009), 37.
54 Jerome of Stridon, Hebrew Questions on Genesis 6:9, in C.T.R. Hayward, Saint Jerome's Hebrew Questions on Genesis (Clarendon Press, 1995), 37.
55 Reish Lakish, in b. Sanhedrin 108a, in Tzvi Hersh Weinred, ed., Koren Talmud Bavli (Koren Publishers, 2017), 30:380.
56 Ambrose of Milan, On Noah 4 §10, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 140:36.
57 Augustine of Hippo, The City of God 15.26, in Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century I/7:178.
58 Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis, JPS Torah Commentary (Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 50.
59 Joseph E. Coleson, Genesis 1-11: A Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition (Beacon Hill Press, 2012), 207.
60 Martin Sicker, Reading Genesis Politically: An Introduction to Mosaic Political Philosophy (Praeger, 2002), 82.
61 Martin Luther, Lectures on Genesis 6:9-10, in Luther's Works 2:56.
62 Bill T. Arnold, Genesis, New Cambridge Bible Commentary (Cambridge University Press, 2008), 98.
63 John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 21.18, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 82:63.
64 R. R. Reno, Genesis, Brazos Theological Commentary (Brazos Press, 2010), 116-117.
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